Let's Review — Bogus Skill "Fruitmaster"

So far, all of the content I've posted to this blog has been related to Guild Wars 2, but I don't want that to be the case forever. Thus, I've decided to write reviews of some of the winter season's anime—the ones I've actually been watching, that is—as each of their seasons finish up.

The first of these shows to conclude has been Bogus Skill "Fruitmaster", so that will be the focus of today's review. Without further ado, let's begin.

Bogus Skill "Fruitmaster"

Full name: Bogus Skill "Fruitmaster": About that Time I Became Able to Eat Unlimited Numbers of Skill Fruits (That Kill You)

Fruitmaster takes place in a fantasy world with a game-like skill system similar to many other anime; what makes it unique is that, in this world, skills are granted by eating a "skill fruit", an idea clearly inspired by One Piece's devil fruits. Skill fruits don't take away your ability to swim, but they do inherit one aspect of their inspiration: anyone who eats two skill fruits will die.

Our story follows two protagonists: Light Underwood, a bold young man who wants to make a mark on history as a famous adventurer, and his childhood friend, Lena. As the story begins, Lena obtains the 'Sword Saint' skill and is forced to join a party of heroes called Sacred; Light, on the other hand, receives the titular bogus skill, 'Fruitmaster', which dooms him to a life as a simple farmer—that is, until he discovers his skill's secondary effect.

Thus enters the third member of our main cast: Ayla, a young orphan girl that Light takes in during his short stint as a farmer. Light happens to be farming skill fruits, which Ayla accidentally cooks into a stew, causing her to gain the 'Appraisal' skill and Light to gain the 'Sword God' skill, revealing that his Fruitmaster skill makes him the only person in the world who can eat multiple skill fruit, theoretically allowing him to obtain as many skills as he wants.

Intro

First, I wanted to comment on Fruitmaster's intro, which is shockingly spectacular. I'm usually not a big fan of J-Pop, but I must admit that "Bravely Dance" is an absolute bop. The visuals used for the intro are also amazing—it contains some of the smoothest animation of the whole show, and it has some striking art direction and stellar directing as well. If the entire show looked like its intro, it'd be a visual masterpiece.

Characters

Fruitmaster's cast is quite small. Beyond the 3 main characters, there is Monika, a blacksmith who refuses to forge weapons after a sword she made was used to kill her grandmother, as well as the eccentric miss Flower-Hat and her bodyguard, Yuan. The count of villains fairs a bit better, including the mysterious Holy Sister, the arrogant "hero" Grouse, the dancer-necromancer Dratena, the corrupt merchant Zamdo, and the final foe of the season, Argos.

Among the main cast, Light is bold, outgoing, and kind-hearted, and laser-focused on his goal of becoming a world-renowned adventurer; it's a good foundation, but he doesn't develop much at all over the season, and ends up coming off as a bit dry. 

Lena fairs a bit better—she is similarly outgoing and kind, but we get to see her overcome some genuine inner conflicts throughout the season. Early on, she is forced by the Holy Sister to join the Sacred party, whose other members are cruel and inconsiderate of the people they're supposed to be helping. She ultimately resolved to leave the party in order to stay true to herself and help others within her means. Later, she also has to come to terms with forgiving and fighting alongside Dratena, who had tried to kill her previously.

As for the rest of the cast, Ayla's character is very simple, but charming; she's perfectly serviceable in her role in the story. Monika, on the other hand, presents a very unique and genuinely compelling conflict regarding the morality of her forging a weapon for Light. Though she at first refuses, she eventually comes around, considering that a weapon in the right person's hands can be used for good; the rift between her and her father, caused by her refusal to forge weapons, also makes for compelling drama.

The villains are a bit of a mixed bag. The Holy Sister is mysterious, and we get an interesting reveal regarding her abilities in the final episode, but she doesn't play much of an active role throughout the season. Grouse is a very one-dimensional asshole who is only really relevant for a single episode, and Argos is a pretty standard chaotic evil archetype who doesn't do anything particularly interesting or unique, though he does escape to allow for potential development down the line.

The most interesting character in the cast is almost certainly Dratena. Initially appearing as a demented necromancer sent to assassinate Light and his party, she escapes their initial confrontation, and Lena later encounters her during her solo adventure in the city of Athena. Though Lena is hunting her down for more information about the Holy Sister, she learns of her tragic past and how she's been spurned and discriminated against for possessing a "taboo skill".

Dratena expresses loyalty to the Holy Sister, who showed her kindness in order to manipulate her, but she isn't solely a villain. Working for the Sister is only a fraction of her life. She's a disgraced noble who wants to be a dancer despite the people's distaste for her. She ends up redeeming herself and fighting alongside Lena to protect the city from Argos, and in the finale she ultimately decides to join the others in their investigation of the Holy Sister, eager to learn the truth about her employer.

Action

While Fruitmaster is an action fantasy show, its action isn't actually particularly impressive. The animation is fine, but none of the action ever stood out to me as particularly well-done—it consisted largely of still shots and other workarounds common in smaller productions. This in itself isn't a huge issue, but the show didn't do much to make up for the lack of impressive animation.

The actual choreography of the fights is also very simple—a lot of "A attacks B", followed by "B attacks A" without much intrigue. Instead, the fights focus primarily on the emotional weight of each conflict as the main point of engagement, plus the occasional clever strategy—for example, during his fight with Grouse, Light wields a broom, which his 'Sword God' skill decides is similar enough to a sword to count, making for a humorous moment; for another example from a later episode, Monika makes a genuinely clever use of her blacksmithing skill to entrap some thugs as they stepped over a sheet of metal.

I'd be remiss not to mention what is easily the worst fight in the show: their encounter with the wicked dragon after facing Dratena. They spend a significant portion of this battle, faced with what we're told is one of the most dangerous monsters in this setting, simply standing around and talking about their plan. Clearly the dragon is very patient, as it waits for them to finish their discussion before it does anything. Even once the fight proper begins, the dragon's movements are very stilted and limited; the team clearly lacked either the time or budget to make it do anything interesting, and it ultimately just gets one-shot when Light obtains a skill that can put creatures to sleep.

Finally, let's discuss the main point of intrigue for combat in this setting: skills. Fruitmaster employs a fairly standard magic system in which each character possesses a single skill (except Light, of course) with a straightforward effect, such as, say, manipulating electricity. Some common anime ability tropes also make prominent appearances as skills, such as an appraisal skill and the concepts of a "Sword Saint" and "Sword God". Fruitmaster doesn't really show off any particularly unique abilities, though this could partly be attributed to its small cast size, as stories with these types of magic systems generally introduce more complex and interesting powers as they progress and introduce more characters.

The lack of interesting abilities does have a definite negative impact on the action, and this is in large part due to the fact that Fruitmaster, like many anime before it, has fallen victim to the trope of giving its main protagonist the least interesting ability possible. Light's main combat skill, Sword God, simply grants him increased athletic abilities while he is holding a sword (or a similar enough object). Suffice to say, this doesn't create many opportunities for clever usage or unique fight choreography. 

Not to worry, however: Fruitmaster has two protagonists, and Lena makes up for Light's boring abilities with her Sword Saint skill, which grants her increased athletic abilities... while she's... holding a sword... Hm.

Finally, there's one last point I'd like to make regarding this show's action: it doesn't seem to know which subgenre it wants to be. To be precise, Fruitmaster can't seem to decide between being a fun power fantasy or an adventure with genuine stakes, so it tries to do both at the same time. This results in some logical issues that take you out of the show if you think about them too much. For example, Light starts out his adventure by defeating Grouse, who is touted as a powerful hero, and then subsequently surviving an encounter with a wicked dragon, which is stated to be one of the most powerful monsters in the setting; despite this, later on in the season he ends up being nearly defeated by Zamdo, who is... just some corrupt merchant working for the Holy Sister? Shouldn't this guy be significantly weaker than Grouse?

This issue is also reflected in the way Light uses his titular Fruitmaster ability. While the show does establish that eating multiple fruit in quick succession causes him pain, there's nothing stopping him from, say, eating a fruit every day to gradually acquire a huge number of skills. Instead of doing this, Light only eats additional fruit mid-battle when he's desperate for a new skill. While the show could explain this—perhaps Light actually wants to be challenged, and thus consciously avoids making himself too powerful—but it doesn't bother to. The actual reason he doesn't do this is clear: while the story is conceptually about a supremely OP protagonist, it also wants to be an adventure with stakes at the same time, so it keeps Light weaker than he theoretically could be to enable that.

Plot

Fruitmaster's story starts off with a breakneck pace. In the span of just the first two episodes, all of this happens:

• We're introduced to our main characters and receive exposition about skills and skill fruits
• We see our protagonists obtain their skills
• We timeskip to a few months later, where Light is now a farmer living with Ayla
•  Ayla accidentally cooks with a skill fruit, kicking off the story's main gimmick
• Light and Ayla become adventurers, go on a quest, and have a short feud with some side character adventurers who are never relevant again
• Light reunites with Lena as a member of Sacred, who feigns not knowing him
• Light and Ayla meet with Lena secretly to learn about her conflict with her party members
• Light challenges Grouse to a duel and defeats him
• Our three main characters form a party, but are discriminated against to only receive low-paying gruntwork jobs; they accept every one anyways

During these early stages, the writing feels rather clunky. A lot of things happen quickly and conveniently to set the plot in motion and get all of our characters together, and some events—such as Light managing to defeat Grouse—seem unrealistic and shortsighted. To me, at least, it feels very much like the author didn't completely know what they wanted their story to be about yet and was simply going through the motions to establish the series' gimmick and rush through all the setup needed for the rest of the story to happen.

The writing remains a bit shaky, but steadily improves as our heroes venture to an abandoned manor and have their encounter with Dratena and, subsequently, the wicked dragon. It is here that the author makes a very bold decision: they split our main characters up, with Lena traveling to the city of Athena to investigate the Holy Sister while Light and Ayla remain in the capital.

It is due to this decision that I have been referring to Light and Lena as dual protagonists throughout the article—once they split up, each of them go on completely distinct and separate adventures. They spend over half of the season separated and don't even meet back up at the end, which is a very bold move by the author that displays confidence in their writing ability. To their credit, the writing does make an incredible leap in quality from this point forward: more interesting characters like Monika, Flower-Hat, and Zamdo are introduced, and while the choreography is still simple, Light's battle with Zamdo is a significant improvement over previous encounters. The improved writing continues as the story shifts to focus on Lena's adventure, adding significant depth to Dratena and Flower-Hat and putting in some work to build up the setting and its history. All the while, the show also gradually builds a mystery behind the Holy Sister's true intentions as she manipulates events from behind the scenes.

Conclusion: 6.5/10

Fruitmaster is a fairly standard fantasy adventure that presents a mixed bag of ideas. On one hand, its power system is fairly generic, and its setting receives little to no worldbuilding until rather late in the show; on the other, it has a few character concepts that are genuinely unique and compelling. The concept of people being discriminated against for possessing powers that are "evil" or unsightly, while not entirely unique, is inherently interesting, and its implementation is well-executed with Dratena. Having a blacksmith as one of the main characters in the form of Monika is also a fairly unique choice, and between her and Ayla I appreciate that the main cast actually contains some non-combatants, which is surprisingly rare in action fantasy anime.

While it has a bit of a rocky start, Fruitmaster improves steadily as it goes on and really gets its footing. The animation, while not particularly impressive, is generally "good enough", and the actual art is surprisingly good. While some of the characters are simple, they're charming enough to be likeable, and the few that the show tries to develop and make genuinely interesting are all rather great successes.

Overall, Fruitmaster is a pretty decent show which becomes a fun, if simple, watch once it really gets moving about a third of the way in. I give it a solid 6.5/10.